For this class you’ll want to form the groups you will use for responding to each other’s blogs. Each student will respond to three blogs. Groups can be created randomly, say by using the alphabet, or more thoughtfully. You are beginning to know your students intimately and you may want to assess them and put them in groups accordingly, based on emerging strengths and areas needing improvement.

Activities

Attendance and introduction (2-3 minutes)

Take attendance and introduce class as usual.

Assign a postscript and collect student work (10 minutes)

Put postscript questions on the overhead and instruct students to answer them, then turn them in with the other things that are due today. Here are some sample postscript prompts:

Explain which aspect of your blog was most successful and why.

Explain which aspect of your blog was most difficult and how you addressed it.

Describe an idea from the workshop—a peer’s suggestion or something that occurred to you while reading other blogs—that you used in revision.

Remind students that as you grade, you’ll use the grading criteria that are listed on the assignment sheet. You might give them an idea of when they can expect the assignment back.

Share Blogs (30-35 minutes)

In the groups your created, have students exchange copies of their final blog drafts. Remind students of their purpose in this activity, that they are not workshopping but critically reading the blog with the intention of responding—the last aspect of Assignment 2. Have student s read the three blogs twice, once initially with their pens down, before rereading critically and actively, marking areas of question, where they want to respond, etc. When students finish reading each blog, have them outline or compose their responses, making notes to themselves on texts they want to revisit for accuracy and clarity, as well as research they may want to conduct to fill any gaps in their knowledge which would hinder a thoughtful response.

Transition from Phase 1 to Phase 2

Once students finish reading blogs, you can have them take time to reflect on where you’ve been and discuss how it relates to where you’re going. Bring back the writing as a conversation idea (you likely have an overhead of this from week 1):
Ask students to describe how the writers we’ve read so far find answers to questions about climate change. Some of this will be review from Day 5. Your list might include things such as: They get involved with something they care about; they talk to other people; they think about the questions raised by their research; they read books, popular magazine articles, scholarly articles, newspaper articles, etc.

Now, we’re moving to the second stage of the conversation model: the stage during which we form our own opinions and find ways to support our ideas to prepare for "entering the conversation" by writing an academic argument. We’ll be working in small groups to research answers to some of the questions we formulated during Phase 1.

We can take direction from the writers we’ve been talking about as we go forward with these inquiries: We should inquire into something we care about, we should remain as open-minded as possible, and we should aim to become as informed as possible as we try to find answers to questions. Also, we need to allow ourselves to leave some questions unanswered.

After the research, each student will write an academic argument based on his/her own inquiry or on another group’s inquiry.

Introduce Topics and Inquiry Issues list (5 minutes)

At this point we’ve discovered that within the rhetoric of green there are seemingly endless topics of inquiry and issues within them to consider. Sustained inquiry asks us to continue questioning further into a topic and find interesting and unique ways to think about the issues. In order to keep track of our sustained inquiry, begin a topics & issues list. On a piece of paper, create two columns. In the first column, list all of the topics that have been raised so far this semester within the rhetoric of green. In the second column, being to list inquiry questions, or current debatable issues that different stakeholders are having within the topic.

You can start this as a class activity and ask students to finish it independently for homework.

Conclude class and assign homework for Tuesday (2-3 mins)

Finish Assignment 2 by posting your comments to three of your peers’ blog entries. Review the Blogging Overview to remind yourselves of best practices and ensure we conduct ourselves civilly. Long live the conversation!

Finish the topics and issues list for homework. Come to class ready to share your list.

Read “Cache La Poudre” by AmericanRivers.org in ROG. Also preview the Glade Reservoir material and NISP link found in the ROG.